Part 34

Fin MacCool kept his tubs of gold in the lake near Muckross Abbey and his dog Bran watched them. "One day a brute of an Englishman, an' a great diver intirely, came over to git the goold, and when he wint down into the wather the dog Bran sazed him by the trousers and shook the life out of him until he died, and his ghost has been wanderin' around there ivir sence."

The shore of the lake under the windows of Ross Castle is strewn with curious-looking flat stones. They are the books of his library which The O'Donaghue threw out of the window when he was mad one day, and they turned to rocks.

When The O'Donaghue was a slip of a boy and was sitting in front of the castle an old woman came running along shrieking that the O'Sullivans had come through the pass from County Cork and were stealing the cattle. "The O'Donaghue, thin only thirteen years old, bedad, seizes an oulde sword and kills every mother's son of the thaving blaggards, an' sticks their bodies up agin the wall as a warning to all the ruffians of the clans beyant the mountains.

"When The O'Donaghue was a young man and went into his first battle he slew six hundred of his enemies in a single day. He fought so long and became so tired that his legs and arms would have fallen off his body if they hadn't been held together by his armor.

"One day when Ossian, the poet, came to Killarney he met an old priest trying to carry a sack of corn on his back. Ossian relieved him of the burden. The priest called on the Holy Virgin to bless him, whereupon Ossian said, 'I help you because you are an old man and not for the sake of virgins or married women or widdies,' for Ossian was a hathen and he didn't know any better, an' how could he know what the holy father meant when he sphoke of the Blessed Virgin? But, nevertheless, the curse was on him, and in a minute he was an ould shrivelled, crippled crater, a dale oulder than the priest whose sack of corn he was carrying. And all this for takin' the name of Blessed Virgin in vain, and not knowing any better. But the priest, with a few words of prayer, relaved the enchantment and converted Ossian to Christianity on the sphot."

Ross Castle was the stronghold of the O'Donaghues. It was built somewhere about the twelfth century by the celebrated Hugh O'Donaghue, who lives in the lake and rides about the country every seven years. It is an historic fact that he lived there once, although the legends that are told of him go back for centuries before its foundation. There is a massive tower or keep, about one hundred feet high and one hundred feet square, "and ivy clasps the fissured stones with its entwining arms." The walls of the tower are almost perfect. There is a long extension, however, entirely in ruins, but it gives an idea of the enormous dimensions of the castle. It was surrounded by outworks of great strength, and you can see traces of the round watch towers at the angles. A stone staircase leads to the top of the tower, where a beautiful view of the country can be obtained. Few ruins in Ireland are so extensive and so well kept.

Everybody has to pay a sixpence to see Ross Castle, and the money goes into the empty pocket of the Earl of Kenmare. You have to pay to see everything in this country, however, and sometimes the petty hotel charges are exasperating. They are insignificant, but everything goes in the bill; every time you draw a breath or ask a question it costs twopence. If the hotel managers would make a straight rate per day to cover all these trifles they would make a great deal more money and save a great deal of temper. The only free ruins are those of the ancient Abbey of Agahadoe, which occupy a conspicuous site on the ridge back of the town where they were built in the eighth century by Finian, the leper saint.

Ross Castle has withstood many a siege in its time, but was finally captured, dismantled, and left in its present condition during the civil war in 1652. It was attacked by General Ludlow with an army of four thousand footmen and two hundred horse, and defended by The O'Donaghue of that time. Finding it impregnable by land, Ludlow left a portion of his force to hold it in a state of siege, while he retired to Castlemaine and built a fleet of boats with which he made an attack by water. There was an ancient proverb that "Ross Castle will never fall until ships float in the Lake of Killarney," hence, the garrison remembered that saying when they saw Ludlow's flotilla approaching, and were so demoralized by the superstition that they abandoned it and laid down their arms. It was the last of the O'Donaghues. Their power and glory have never been regained.

The village of Killarney is unattractive and untidy, but it is a busy place. One doesn't understand why in a country where there is so much room to spare, the villages should not be made up of detached cottages with gardens and lawns, hedges and shade trees, instead of sections of solid blocks that look as if they had been cut out of the tenement house districts of crowded cities. Killarney is a solid mass of brick and mortar, with stuccoed fronts, painted a dingy yellow, without the slightest thing to relieve the monotony until you suddenly pass the last house and the green fields begin.

It is a great tourist center, and there are a dozen hotels and boarding-houses of different pretensions and prices. There are "licensed houses" and "unlicensed houses" and some of them are licensed for seven days in a week, which means that the proprietor has permission to sell whisky and beer from two to five o'clock on the Sabbath day. Cook's excursion parties come in like swarms of bees, buzzing around the hotels and shops where laces and other curiosities are for sale and carry off loads of queer things as souvenirs. They breakfast at seven o'clock in the morning and are piled into great four-horse coaches by nine and start off on excursions with their luncheons in baskets under the seats. They return at sunset completely tired out, but the next morning are off for Dublin or Glengariff. It is about as hard work to travel with an excursion party as anything I know of, for every moment must be economized and everybody feels under obligations to see everything.

Killarney is quite an educational center also. There are several popular schools there and several monasteries. The Franciscans conduct a theological seminary and the Christian Brothers have a college in connection with the cathedral. There are two or three convents where young ladies are educated, and a large institution in which two hundred and ten girls are being taught by the nuns to make lace, which is one of the most profitable occupations an Irish woman can engage in. And they have a School of Housewifery, conducted by the British government under the supervision of the minister of agriculture at Dublin. Paternalism is carried farther in Ireland than in Switzerland, Germany, or any other place I know of, as you will admit when you hear that twenty-three rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed mavourneens are being educated at the expense of the taxpayers as domestic servants. They are rescued from the filthy cabins in the mountains, washed, and clothed in neat liveries, natty little muslin caps are pinned to their raven tresses, frilled muslin aprons are fastened to their frocks, and they are taught how to wash dishes and cook and make beds and do plain sewing, and dust the bric-a-brac in the drawing-room and say, "Yes, me lady," and "Yes, me lord," and courtesy when they are spoken to. They learn to mend and embroider, to do up hair, to fasten dresses and other duties pertaining to the jurisdiction of a lady's maid, and, after a year or so of this training, they are found positions in the households of the nobility, where they will spend their lives as servants and marry a footman or a gamekeeper, as will their children and grandchildren generations to come after them, because domestic service is a profession in Great Britain, and is followed by families who are trained for their work.

This school is a great thing for the Irish girls in the mountain cabins, whose lives might otherwise be hopelessly sunk in squalor and filth that seem to be inseparable from the peasant population. I have never been able to find anybody to explain why an Irish farmer piles his manure in front of the only door to his cabin. It is an habitual subject of witticism, just as it is in Switzerland, where similar customs prevail, but with thousands of acres of bare ground all around the cabin, it would seem that some other place might be found.

It occurred to me, too, as I was going through the School of Housewifery, that our government might do worse than establish similar schools in the Southern States for training colored girls in the same way, but I suppose the Supreme Court would pronounce such a scheme unconstitutional.

A house by the roadside now occupied by a farmer named McSweeny is pointed out as the birthplace of Robert Emmet.

Lord Kitchener was born about nineteen miles from here, at Crotto House, Tralee, where his father and mother were stopping for the summer. His father was a colonel in the army and was on leave from his regiment at the time of Kitchener's birth.

The great Daniel O'Connell was also born in the neighborhood, and his nephew, Sir Maurice O'Connell, lives in a stately mansion that overlooks the lower lake in the middle of a beautiful grove.

Muckross Abbey ranks with Melrose Abbey in Scotland and Kenilworth Castle in England as among the most picturesque and interesting ruins in the world. The walls and the Gothic windows, the tower and several other distinctive features are well preserved, and the ivy drapery makes it an exquisite picture. The abbey stands within the park of two hundred and ninety acres that surrounds Muckross House and is the property of Lord Ardilaun, who has many beautiful places in different parts of Ireland, and cannot possibly enjoy them all; but none is so beautiful as Muckross House.

He purchased the property of the Herbert family who inherited it from Florence MacCarthy More, who, in 1750 married Agnes, daughter of Edward Herbert of this county, and they had one son who was the last MacCarthy More in the direct line, and that famous family became extinct, for he died without issue in 1770, and the estate passed into the possession of his mother's family, being the nearest relatives. The Honorable Arthur Herbert died in 1866, and a beautiful Celtic cross has been erected to his memory upon the highest hill in the neighborhood, overlooking the park that he prized so highly, and where he enjoyed so much pleasure. His widow and daughters lived there for thirty years until they expired, when the place was offered at auction and Lord Ardilaun bid it in for £63,000 for the estate, and paid £10,000 more for furniture, pictures, live stock, and other property, making it cost him altogether about £73,000. And now he offers it for sale--the whole thing, a house of thirty-two rooms, a park of two hundred and ninety acres, the ruins of Muckross Abbey, and history and legends galore--for £75,000. And perhaps he would take less from the proper person. In 1907 a syndicate was organized to purchase the place and turn it into a Monte Carlo. They proposed to make the handsome old mansion a gambling-house and erect a large hotel with all possible allurements near by; but when Lord Ardilaun learned of the scheme, he instructed his solicitors to insert in the deed a clause stipulating that it should be used for residential purposes only, and that made it worthless to the syndicate. So Muckross Abbey and its beautiful surroundings are still in the market.

The abbey dates back to the dawn of Christianity in Ireland, and its site was originally occupied in the fourth or fifth century by a monastery founded by St. Finian of Innisfallen and his monks. The present building, however, was erected by Donald MacCarthy More, Prince of Desmond, in 1330, and was finished by his son in 1340 for the Franciscan friars, who occupied it as a monastery and as a college. There was some kind of an institution on the same site between the monastery of St. Finian and the present one, for an ancient manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, gives an account of its destruction by fire in the eleventh century. The founder, Donald MacCarthy More, built the beautiful chapel as a burial place for himself and his posterity. It is also the burial place of the O'Donaghues of the Glens, and in the very center of the choir is a large square tomb in which was deposited the body of "The Great O'Donaghue," the chieftain of the lakes, of whom Mr. Maurice R. Moriarity, the custodian, gives many interesting legends in his history of the ruins.

The O'Donaghues were connected by marriage with the MacCarthys, kings of Munster, and had their headquarters at Blarney Castle, near Cork. Twelve generations, so far as the inscriptions can be deciphered, of that proud family are lying there, and more than twenty generations of O'Donaghues. The last MacCarthy buried here was Florence, husband of Agnes Herbert, who lived in Muckross House until his death in 1770. The last O'Donaghue buried here was Donal, a direct descendant of The O'Donaghue of the Glens, who was a member of parliament and died in 1889. His son Jeffrey, "The O'Donaghue," as the head of the family is always called, is a barrister living in Dublin, a gentleman of high reputation and much influence, although he has lost almost everything but his proud name and a lineage that is interwoven with the history of Ireland since human actions were recorded.

The grandfather of "The O'Donaghue" was a captain in the Munster Fusiliers, which were recruited in County Kerry and was stationed at Chester, near Liverpool, the home of Gladstone, in 1860, during a religious agitation. A band of rioters were making ready to burn an effigy of the pope when Captain O'Donaghue warned the leaders that if such an insult to the holy father was offered the Kerry men of his regiment would burn the city of Chester to the ground. When this threat became known the mob dispersed, and there were no more religious demonstrations while Captain O'Donaghue and the men of Kerry were in the Chester barracks.

"The O'Donaghues were ginerally prayin' when they woren't foightin' or dhrinkin'," said the ancient oracle who gave me this information. "They feared none but God, and since Maolduin O'Donaghue burned the monastery of Innisfallen and murdered the monks in 1158 they have spint much toime doin' pinnance for his sins."

It is customary for the heads of these old families to use the word "The" as a prefix to their names to indicate their rank, and I have seen letters signed in that way, without the initials of the writer. For example, "The MacDermott" is a barrister of importance in Dublin. "The O'Donivan" lives at Cork and retains a part of the ancestral estates. "The O'Shea" is a clergyman of the Church of England stationed at Manchester and makes much of his position as the head of the clan. "The O'Neill" is the Lord of Londonderry, and "The O'Connor" lives at Sligo--a brother of the late Sir Nicholas O'Connor, who was British ambassador at Constantinople at the time of his death. "The O'Flaherty" is a justice of the peace near Galway, and a man of importance. And members of other old families recognize the head of their clan in a similar manner, although it carries nothing but glory and gratification with it.

"The O'Sullivans, the MacCarthys, and all the old families loike the O'Donaghues, are gone; played out, as ye moight say," remarked the oracle. "For tin cinturies the O'Sullivans ruled whole counties in Ireland, but they have lost their proid as well as their property, and are now contint to kape pooblic houses [saloons] and sit around complaining of the hard toimes. The whole country south of here is full of O'Sullivans. There's more of thim than of any other name. If anny wan were to sail across County Kerry in a balloon and cast out a bag of corn, ivery kernel would hit an O'Sullivan, but they are only proivates in the clan. The ruling line is extinct and no O'Sullivan now owns an acre of the old estates. Nor do the O'Donaghues; they're as poor as church mice, having lost all but the name and the spirit of the race.

"Look at that grave there; it's filled with the bones of Black Jeffery O'Donaghue. They called him the Black Prince of the Glenflesk. He lived at Killaha Castle, situated five moiles from here and built on a rock standin' in the middle of a bog, and nobody could find the way but those who knew it. His spirit nothing could contain. He hated the English as no man ever hated thim before or since, and whin he saw an Englishman his temper would rise like the hair on the back of an angry dog. No Englishman ever came within soight of Killaha Castle and got home aloive. But Black Jeffery died in his bed after all, of tuberculosis; ye kin see the date on the tomb--1756, age 36.

"Did yez ivir hear about the midnight marriage of the master of Blarney Castle which took place here in the ruined abbey in the year 1590, which Quane Elizabeth an' the intire parlymint did their best to prevint? It's a great story. The heads of the two branches of the MacCarthy family were thin united in the persons of Florence MacCarthy of Blarney Castle, the same gintleman that deludered Quane Elizabeth with his soft words and caused the invintion of the word 'blarney' that is used so much these days. Waal, he was in love with Aileen MacCarthy, his cousin, daughter of Donal MacCarthy Mor, Earl of Glencare. The two factions had been inemies, and it was the policy of the English to kape thim apart, because a reconciliation would bring them togither an' make thim more dangerous to British authority. And that was what Quane Elizabeth was trying to prevint. She feared that if the MacCarthy factions made frinds they would join Hugh O'Neill and the great Earl of Desmond, thin in rebellion, and so the marriage was forbidden by her majesty. An' that made Florence MacCarthy all the more determined to wed Aileen, who had been his sweetheart in sacrit for several years, and one day he crossed the lake wid Lady Aileen and her mother in a boat rowed by four lusty gallowglasses with their battle-axes lyin' where the oars had been.

"They landed at midnight at the abbey, thin half in ruins, solemn and mournful, in silence and decay. The moon shone through the roofless walls and the broken windows of the crumbling shrine of Irrelagh, upon the blissed head of a vinerable friar, Florence MacCarthy's chaplain, who was awaiting thim himself--one of thim who, in the dark days of Henry VIII. was expelled from the abbey at the point of a Protestant sword. Wid him was O'Sullivan Mor, MacFinian, the Countess of Glencare, and the beautiful Lady Una O'Leary, and that was all. No bard was there to sing the bridal song, no harp to give swate sounds, no banner to wave, no clansmen to raise a joyous cheer, an' no spear or battle-ax gleamed in the moonlight, but the Blissed Virgin and all the saints were lookin' down all the while, approvin', through the roofless aisles, when Florence MacCarthy and Aileen MacCarthy pledged their vows.

"This sacred marriage was proclaimed an act of treason by Quane Elizabeth, and for that Florence MacCarthy went to the Tower, but he got the bist of it after all."

The windows of Muckross Abbey are the most perfect of any ruin in Ireland, and the moldings of several of the doorways are in a fine state of preservation, so that the carving can be carefully studied. There is a cloister thirty-three feet square, encircled by a vaulted corridor seven feet wide and lighted by twenty-two arched windows, which is as good as if it were built yesterday. And in the center of the quadrangle is a venerable yew tree, said to be the largest in the world, having been planted by the monks at the foundation of the abbey in 1340. It was usual, so I am told, for Franciscan monks to plant yew trees in the courtyards of their monasteries, and they are found frequently in ruins. The trunk of this tree is smooth and straight to a height of twenty feet, and is about twelve feet in circumference at the base. The branches spread over the inclosing walls like an umbrella and darken the entire quadrangle, which never had any other roof.

Several legends are woven around this majestic tree which, in the eyes and hearts of the people of Killarney, is an object of great veneration. If any one should injure it, even by breaking off a twig, he would excite popular indignation. They believe that such sacrilege will be punished by the death of the guilty person within a year, and it is a remarkable coincidence that such things have occurred several times.

The kitchen, the refectory, the chapter-rooms, and several other apartments are in an excellent state of preservation and are well cared for, but the cells of the dormitory have almost disappeared. The tower stands as it was five hundred years ago, but is an empty shell, having no roof, flooring, or staircase, and visitors are prohibited from climbing the walls.

Some of the graves are quite modern. Muckross Abbey is still open for the burial of members of four families, who have ancient rights. The latest grave was made in 1902. Several of the epitaphs are quite interesting, particularly those which bear testimony to the virtues and the happiness and usefulness of the women of the O'Donaghue and MacCarthy families. For example, one of them describes a beloved wife, "who, in her progress through life, fulfilled all its duties with uniform and exemplary prudence, whose respectful love as a daughter, whose affectionate kindness as a sister, whose fond and provident care as a mother, and whose endearing tenderness as a wife, were eminently conspicuous. Combining the discharge of social obligations with piety, edifying yet unobtrusive, she lived and died a Christian. To rescue her memory from oblivion, to preserve a remembrance of her virtues for the instruction and imitation of the young, this stone is erected by her disconsolate husband."

If you want a description of Muckross Abbey that is worth reading you will find it in the works of Sir Walter Scott, who was there in 1825, and if you are pleased with that, and would like a little more of the same sort, read Lord Macaulay's account of his visit in 1849; in which he says that one of the boatmen on Lake Killarney "gloried in having rowed Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth about the lake when they were here twenty-four years ago, and said it was a compensation to him for having missed a hanging which took place in the village that very day."

XXVII

INTEMPERANCE, INSANITY, AND CRIME